I must be doing something wrong writing this column as up to this point no one has threatened to sue me.

At first glance that comes across as weird I am sure but in the newspaper business it makes sense.

Over the next few installments of this column I am going to be talking about just that; the newspaper business. Or more specifically about my days as a newspaper reporter and columnist. While my first love a a writer is and always has been comics working as a reporter has also had its interesting and fun moments.

My stretch in the newspaper industry was five years from 2002 to 2007. While I had previously written articles for newspapers it was during those years in the early 2000s that i devoted all my writing energy to that medium. I worked for three different papers over that period and each job was different. I won't be naming those papers for reasons I am sure will become obvious but anyone who was around Port Stanley back then will know who I am talking about.

When I started working as a reporter in August 2002 I thought that outside of writing more and shorter articles it was pretty much the same as what I was doing before for newspapers. I could never have been more wrong. Within two weeks of working for the first paper I was covering a story about property lines on the beach that had the potential of dividing the village into two factions. And that wan't the only story I was working on. The paper I was working for was a weekly that covered news from Dutton Ontario to the west of Port Stanley to a village named Orwell near Aylmer Ontario which is east of where I lived. I covered Central Elgin (which Port Stanley was a part of) municipal and Elgin county politics for the area as well as the crime beat. It was pretty much an impossible task to cover all the news within that area for me and the other two reporters so I had to pick and chose what I felt my readers would be interested in. While there was occasionally someone who was disappointed that I didn't cover his or her event for the most part everyone was happy including my publisher who saw a steady growth in circulation after i came aboard.That's why I was taken aback one day when my publisher called me and cheerfully told me I was being sued.

Now if you have never been threatened with legal action-as I hadn't before I got that phone call-you might understand why I went into automatic panic mode. As I tried to express my concerns over the matter to the publisher he replied that my being sued was in fact great news and that it meant that I was doing my job.He then went on to explain that most of the time nothing ever comes from such threats and that I was obviously starting to uncover something that the person who was suing me didn't want me to.

"Don't worry", he said. "Keep up the great work", and then he hung up.

While the phrase "nothing usually comes out of such threats" rattled around in my brain and the the word "usually" being in bold type I decided reluctantly take to my publisher at his word. Nothing ever did come out of the threat of legal action or of the other six threats I received during my time as a reporter and in each case what was being done was the person threatening me was trying to scare me off a story.

It was at first unsettling though to say the least. To say that the newspaper business does not have its exciting moments would be false. it would also be false to say that reporters are sometimes asked to do the impossible like the time i was instructed to cover two stories at the same time that were happening on opposite sides of Port Stanley. We'll cover that next time out.

When discussing the problems with print comics being sold exclusively online last time out I mentioned that digital comics had their own set of problems.

The first and most obvious problem is that digital comics don't fit in with conventional comics collecting. While you can store them and pass them back and forth between friends just by their very nature of being digital they don't work a a possible collector's item. With print comics there is a finite number of copies and over time given the right conditions a $3, $4 or $5 comic can increase (or decrease) in value. With digital comics you pay say 99-cents for one today and they will be worth the same (or less) five or ten years down the road. Also, you can also make multiple copies of a digital comic which means in theory there are an infinite number on the market. Not much collectors value there.

The next problem with digital comics is their readability or rather lack thereof. There are a number of people-myself among them-who find it difficult to stare at a screen for an extended period of time. Some of the symptoms that result include headaches, blurring vision and a growing difficulty to concentrate. For people like me reading a digital comic simply isn't an option. In many cases there are print versions available but there are lots that aren't resulting in me and others like me missing out on a lot of potential reading pleasure.

Then there are the problems from the creator's standpoint. On the plus side it is extremely easy to get your comics out into the digital world. So easy in fact that there are thousands of digital comics available with the majority of the creators hoping upon hope that they will be discovered and become superstars.

It ain't gonna happen, folks. Not only are the majority of these digital comics mundane but many are also extremely derivative. And there is so much stuff out there that it is almost impossible to catch anyone's attention; no matter how much publicity you engage in.

Then there is the fact that most of these digital comics are free. For comics creators such as myself who actually try to make a living at this that makes it extremely difficult to earn an income. Even at 99-cents a copy for a comic by the time you divide that between the writer, penciler, inker, letterer and colourist even if you sell 1,000 copies you don't exactly earn something resembling a living wage.

Now to be fair digital comics do have their uses. As promotional material if done correctly they can be invaluable. But the minuses far outweigh the pluses. Maybe one day digital comics will be the way to go in the comics industry for professionals. Just not today.

Since I returned to the comics ;industry in 2011 I have been working exclusively with small press publishers. While I have had a fair amount of work appear in print the sales have been poor. Basically the reason for this is that the comics have only been available online.

The publishers' justification for only releasing the comics this way has been cost. According to them the price of shipping comics is too high for their limited budgets.Even when I have made the suggestion that they at least try to put the comics in comic shops in my hometown of London Ontario, adding that I'd be willing to get the stores to carry the books and do all the promotional work the response has been the same. Such an endevour would be too expensive.

To say that I disagree would be an understatement. If the publishers even just sent a batch of the comics to me at bulk shipping prices it would enable me to increase their sales. And the length of time it would take for the comics to get to me shipping them this way wouldn't matter as these publishers don't publish on anything that resembles a normal schedule anyway. In the end they would have more sales; more than they have online.

There are two main problems with selling comic exclusively online (I am referring to print comics here; digital comics have a whole different set of problems). First, comics were and remain a collectors' medium and while you can get almost anything you want online it still doesn't compare to lookig

through the books in comic shops and talking with fellow fans and staff.Second, with so much available online a publisher's product gets lost amongst the other material. True, that's where promotion comes inn but when everyone else is promoting their stuff a small publisher usually gets lost or more often ignored.

Now I am not saying that publishers shouldn't sell online. Ir is a good additional market. But it shouldn't be the only market. The small publishers need to get their work in comic shops as well otherwise they are always going to be just that; small publishers. And that doesn't benefit anyone.

After finally have gotten myself into some kind of routine since I moved back to London Ontario (Canada) on April 30th 2013 I decided at the beginning of this year to revive this column. I've always enjoyed writing E-Dispatches as, except for "Did you know about...?" which I wrote for the Middlesex Banner newspaper back in 2004-2006 I never had a publisher dictating to me what I should or should not write about. I've always found that to be a drag as a writer and often cramping my creative process.
This time out (meaning volume 5) I plan to take a broader approach to the subjects I will be writing about. As well as discussing comics and pubulp history plus reviewing comics sent my way as I have in the past I also plan to discuss my decades as a published writer (since 1974) and occasional editor and publisher; not only in the comics industry but also in newspaper and magazines. Not only will I be mentioning all the weird and wonderful stuff that has happened to me during my career but I will some of the difficulties I have gone though. Oh yeah; and expressing my opinion on lotsa stuff.
My hope is that this will end up being an enjoyable ride for everyone. I've never really taken the time to side down and reflect on my life as a writer and as I will be 59 this coming April I guess it is long overdue. Sure beats writing an autobiography. Those take forever to work on and I am too busy having fun doing other stuff.
So stick around folks. For the time being this column will only be a monthly but as time permits I will start increasing its frequency. Talk with ya next time.
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Jonathan A. Gilbert is a freelance writer and lives in London Ontario Canada. He can be contacted by email at edispatches@hotmail.com